


taste illuminations

by mornen



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Beds, Death, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Friendship/Love, History, Home, Kissing, Love, Nature, Other, PTSD, Rivendell, Trauma, Visions, Winter, broken souls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27975975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen
Summary: Elrohir lies on his bed, twisting the softness of his cashmere throw around his fingers. It is a faint blue, like snow beneath starlight. His hair is dark against it. Legolas lies on his side, watching him. His hair is golden, as deep, dark, and bright as pure gold in the firelight.‘What if I told you a secret?’ Elrohir whispers. He twists his golden hair around his fingers, a ring about every finger. ‘Would you tell anyone? If I told you?’
Relationships: Elrohir/Legolas Greenleaf
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	taste illuminations

Elrohir lies on his bed, twisting the softness of his cashmere throw around his fingers. It is a faint blue, like snow beneath starlight. His hair is dark against it. Legolas lies on his side, watching him. His hair is golden, as deep, dark, and bright as pure gold in the firelight. 

‘What if I told you a secret?’ Elrohir whispers. He twists his golden hair around his fingers, a ring about every finger. ‘Would you tell anyone? If I told you?’ 

‘Of course I wouldn’t.’ Legolas shifts on the bed, closer to Elrohir. His skin glows the light flickers over it. ‘What secret?’ 

Elrohir lets go of his hair. He props himself up on one elbow. Legolas has eyes that gleam green like a forest, that glint golden in the light, that are deep brown near his pupil, so beautifully dark. 

He kisses Legolas, first his lips, and then the side of his cheek, barely kissing his skin, half kissing the air, his own cheek pressed to the side of his face. He slips on top of Legolas, pressing him down with one arm, taking his hand with his other hand. His lips are against his ear. 

‘Sometimes I forget who I am,’ he whispers. ‘It’s like… my father didn’t… I mean.’ He pauses, trying to find words for it. Legolas is silent patient, not prodding. 

‘It was all broken,’ Elrohir says. ‘All of it. The way he was taken, the way he was running, and everything – the whole world – so broken, everything just pieces. These pieces that he tried to keep to himself, that he tried to save us from. But they became part of us all. I have them. Ella has them. And I forget who I am.’ 

Legolas slides his hand up into Elrohir’s hair. 

‘Who do you become?’ 

Elrohir sees waves on the sea. He sees flames around him. He sees the world ripping apart, and the earth folding on itself, and all of it burning. All of it sinking. The stars are vast, but not untouchable. 

‘I don’t know… Elros? Maedhros? Eärendil… always wandering, cold in the sky. So cold.

‘Sometimes I’m an albatross. Sometimes I’m just bleeding. I wish…’ Elrohir shakes his head. It’s very late. There is no one singing. Someone is crying, but someone is always crying. Rivendell is a sanctuary, and sanctuaries are built for those who cry. 

Legolas swallows. He doesn’t speak. The moon outside is a sliver, large — like a sickle struck through the sky. 

‘I wish…’ Elrohir stares at the moon. ‘Sometimes I’m watching something, and it’s far away, and I want to stop it, but it’s out of reach, and then it’s gone. I never get the ending.’ Elrohir closes his eyes. Legolas smells of pine trees. They were wandering through the pine woods earlier, and the scent lingers in his hair. ‘I wish I had the ending.’ 

‘What is the ending?’ Legolas says.

‘I don’t know. That’s the problem. It would be an answer. At least I would know.’ Elrohir is full of other people’s secrets. So is Elladan. So is Arwen. Elrond has more, and they tangle like a netted wood through his soul. And Elrohir picked up some of them, and his mind is filled with stories that Elrond whispered the answer to in the dead of night when the light was low and the only way Elrohir knew he was crying was from the way his voice broke, and the wetness that formed on the pillow. Because Elrond couldn’t tell him in the light, when the sun was a safety that burnt too bright. Because Elrond is the night, and Elros was the day, burning bright and fast and leaving behind only stories, only a legacy. Because Elrond couldn’t tell him until he was grown. 

But he had to ask. He had to know. 

And those stories had endings, although they were sad. All of them, every one of them, except for the joy hidden deep in the woods of Beren and Lúthien. The joy in their lives and their death together, at rest, together. Bringing into the world people who were not meant to be, who followed them with weary steps as the world broke about them. If you follow any story to the end, won’t it be unhappy?

But the visions that Elrohir has come and go, and he doesn’t know if he will ever know the endings, sad or happy. (If they could be happy.)

Sometimes he pretends they’re not real. It’s easier. 

But sometimes he’s Elrond. Sometimes his brother, his sister. Sometimes he’s his mother. 

He’s always his mother when he looks in the mirror, and he sees her face, but with his father’s eyes, with his father’s hair. He sees his mother in Elladan. And Elrond sees it too, and his memories are joy and sorrow, and he smiles when he cries, until the smile ends.

When Elrohir looks down at Legolas, he sees a soft innocence in him. He was a child who was raised on the edge of a nightmare, but who caught starlight and moonlight and sunlight in a jar, and kept it alive there with new leaves every day, watered it gently so that it would never die. He’s kept it still, and the light shines out from his eyes. He could carry it forever. 

‘I love you,’ Elrohir says. 

‘I love you,’ Legolas answers. He strokes Elrohir’s cheek. ‘What are you thinking?’ 

‘That you’re like sunlight. Like dancing beneath a summer sky.’

‘Which?’ Legolas says.

‘Both.’

‘How?’ 

‘Because you’re joy,’ Elrohir whispers. He kisses him gently. Legolas stares up at him. His lashes are golden. His eyes are a sunlit forest and the deep of the night. His heart is new; his soul is together. 

Sometimes Elrohir doesn’t know how to love him. But that is a secret he keeps from Legolas, because Legolas might not understand that it is a question that comes from love. He might not know that Elrohir does not want to hurt him. 

(‘I’m sorry,’ Elrond says when Elrohir catches glimpses of his nightmares and falls crying in the hall. ‘I didn’t mean for you to know that.’)

It hurts to live forever. It hurts to die. Elrohir does not know if he was made for the world. But he knows he must carry it. 

He kisses Legolas again. Someone is weeping. Not in Rivendell, but in a land where the sand sweeps through the air, and a woman stands as they bury her sister. This is an ending without a story before it that he has seen. This is a moment that will pass, leaving a wound that will never heal. He doesn’t cry, but he slips her story into his heart. He will keep it. 

‘Ro.’ Legolas touches his face. ‘Ro...’ 

Elrohir comes back to him. The moon has risen higher. It is smaller now. He studies the dark part of it, where the sun cannot reach. 

‘I wish,’ he says. ‘That I could save the world.’ 

‘All of it?’ Legolas whispers. He caresses Elrohir’s cheek, his neck. ‘What would that look like?’ 

‘I don’t know,’ Elrohir says. He doesn’t. He’s never been able to picture a world that isn’t broken, with lands sunk beneath the reaching sea. ‘Do you think you could be happy?’ he says. ‘If you left it all behind?’ 

Legolas is quiet for a long moment. His hand stills against Elrohir’s arm. 

‘Do you mean if I sailed to the Undying Lands?’ he asks finally, quieter now than before, as the night grows older. 

Elrohir nods once. He does not get off Legolas. Legolas, who has never seen the ocean, Legolas who did not stand, holding his sister close, watching the ship that bore his mother away until it passed beyond the curve of the horizon to a world he could not see, that he may never reach.

‘If you left now.’ Elrohir brushes his hair behind his ear. Legolas stares at him with perfect solemnity. ‘Would you be able to be happy?’ 

‘No,’ Legolas says. ‘Not now.’ 

Elrohir slips off him and lies beside him again. He holds his hand. 

‘Neither could I.’ 

The wind picks up outside. It sweeps the snow up into the air. Clouds pass over the moon. Clouds start to gather. It will snow again. It will snow, and days will pass, and Elrohir will lie in his soft bed until he can’t take it any longer, and then he will leave the safety of Rivendell again, and take to the wild, to save as much of the world as he can. It feels like it is never enough. He does not know why he must save it. But it begs him to with the visions sends him. 

Legolas watches him. Their fingers are laced. Elrohir kisses his hand. His hands are beautiful, long, with a strength to them you can see in the curve of the muscles on his fingers. 

‘Do you never wonder about the sea?’ Elrohir asks. 

‘I wonder sometimes.’ 

‘But you’re happy?’ 

Legolas tilts his head, weighing the question in his mind.

‘I am happy. Are you happy?’ 

Elrohir smiles at him. He kisses his temple, both of his eyes. He presses his face to the curve of his neck and listens, not saying a word. 

Somewhere someone is singing. She stands in the snow, and the wind carries her voice. It is a lament. They burn her dead sister. The flames go up bright against the snow, and the wind tries to take them.

It is the end of another story. (It is the end of the same story.)

This world means death. This world is beautiful, and so very delicate.

Elrohir pulls Legolas closer to him. He loves the sweet scent of pine in his hair and the strength of his arms closed tight around him. 

This is a moment of peace, and he will keep it, a piece of a story tucked in his heart. Maybe this story will be happy, if you follow it down to the very end. Or maybe it will be short, cut with a death that would not be if he could stay within the refuge of Rivendell. 

But that is not who he is, and Legolas knows this. It is not who Legolas is either. 

Legolas carries the warmth of the sun and the strength of the moon and the promise of starlight, but he does not rest in safety either. He keeps a joy with him as he walks the dark parts of Mirkwood, fighting a nightmare that cannot take him. 

Elrohir holds him close. 

Somewhere someone is born.


End file.
